So, a new site? Yes, after a year of covid and code. The older site was no longer serving its original purpose, and I’m writing now mostly about . . . well, Zen & the Art of Synthesiser Maintenance seems to sum it up. (Contrary to my expectation, it seems no-one had used it before . . . ) Also I’m consolidating a few other things here which never worked very well in the old CMS, and mostly got lost in different subdirectories in earlier/other sites. (They still have their original publication dates though, near as I can work them out — anything prior to this post.)

This site will be divided into topical sections for ease of access, and will be less constrained by templates — I’m doing my own CMS. This may involve a bit more vector graphics than works well with off-the-shelf software, and anything I fancy trying out. Some pages will even have scripts for special operations, but this will always be a) handcrafted, b) lightweight, c) served from this domain, d) stated and explained, and e) honest (but don’t just trust me on that). Enter at your own pleasure over pain ratio, but feel free to contact me about visibility issues.

So it seems Boris Johnson thinks that devolution and the return of the Scottish Parliament has been a disaster.

That’s somewhat curious, as my experience has been that since 1999 Scotland has been better governed than at any time in my life and probably better than any time in history. And this does not depend on a particular party or coalition being in government; it is a consequence of the existence and the structure of the modern Parliament. Scotland has for twenty years had a series of governments which have been more highly representative of the people, and more responsive to our concerns, than ever before. Which is a great deal more than can be said for the United Kingdom governments over that time.

So who exactly has this been disastrous for? Not for Scots; so, for English people perhaps? I rather doubt it. For the most part it has been irrelevant, but it is true that many English people have expressed a sense of envy, and of disappointment in Westminster. We make them look bad. But even so it is scarcely disastrous. Perhaps for the British establishment? But how? Has their ineptitude been shown up so critically? Well, yes, but even that has been simply by events rather than by the existence of a Scottish political system. Except perhaps just recently, in the comparative performance of the governments relating to the pandemic. Is that what he’s on about?

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I will be tremendously glad when the American election is finally over . . . or at least, when Donald Trump is no longer in the news, which may take a while longer. There’s a great many obvious reasons for this, but the one that matters to me at a visceral level is that I’ve spent the last five years or so seeing photographs of him on web pages, on my laptop. I suppose that I have to some extent become inured to the sight, or at least a bit more adept at looking slightly away, but still, every time I scroll up the page, he goes down in the direction of between my thighs, and I have the sense that he’s about to grab my pussy, or something.

Which makes me think that it would be nice if there were some sort of browser filter available to just block images of him completely. I’m not aware of one, but it would be a good idea . . . or indeed perhaps a more general filter that you could train for any face. Critically, it should run on the local system; I don’t especially want a filter which tells some remote site what news pages I’m reading . . . 

Or maybe that’s too much of an ask, or it might be too power-hungry (like someone else I coulddid mention). My brain is at least half-way able to block him out, though it’s taken four years of implied sexual assaults to achieve it. (Or maybe it’s achieved in spite of it.) Maybe it would be a waste of all that effort to turn to software now. Still, it’s a thought; there are likely to be other faces I’d prefer to block at greater speed.

PDF can be a very strange format sometimes.  

Screenshots of a Mullard advert in a PDF copy (produced by World Radio History) of Wireless World December 1964 (p74).

Update 2020-07-20: American Radio History has recently changed its name to World Radio History.)

It’s getting past the point. Really. For quite a while it’s been cheaper, often, to buy things from Germany or the Netherlands, even France, and sometimes Spain, than from most businesses in the South of Scotland or England; and why? Because of the increasingly insane deregulated UK postage and courier ‘industry’. (Don’t you loathe it when services get called ‘industries’ to make them sound like they’re real jobs?)

It’s also been increasingly an issue that eBay in particular now allows sellers to easily exclude areas without thinking about why — which almost always means everywhere North of Perth, West of ooooh Alexandria maybe, sometimes Galloway or Dundee but not Aberdeen, sometimes Paisley but not Greenock; and always means anywhere you need to get on a ferry, a plane, or cross a saltwater bridge to get to.

You kind of expect this from English sellers; and yes I know it includes English Islands too — Isle of Wight notably. But that’s what I mean — England gives the impression of being so hugely divided you expect them to behave in an exclusionary manner towards each other.

But this time, I looked for one specific product on eBay, and it’s a seller, in fact multiple sellers apparently (but I have reservations) in GLASGOW who a) won’t post to the Highlands and Islands, or any ‘offshore’ (whose shore?) part of the UK or associated territories — but, b) will post to the rest of the world, including specifically, Iceland.

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I have just had a rather disturbing thought about the weather, or its function in human communication.

What if the reason why people blither on meaninglessly about the weather is not, as I had generally assumed, a sort of mutual grooming by which they indicate that they are high enough in each others’ regard that they’re willing to coexist, and even communicate meaningfully when there is something worth saying?

I noted earlier that the grass is growing again outside, and so at some point in the next few weeks it will need a trim. And I mentioned it. I think that’s possibly useful information rather than empty chat . . . but there’s a similarity here, isn’t there? Only I’m talking about the season rather than the weather.

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